


Should Lanterns Shine

by hedda62



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River, Kaylee and Book deal with the events of "Objects in Space."  No movie spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Lanterns Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/gifts).



"Glow-worm," said River.

"Mm? What worm?" Kaylee's voice replied drowsily.

Neither had spoken for so long Book might have forgotten they were there, if for the last day his subconscious hadn't been tracking the locations of everyone aboard. Sleep-cycle, and to his knowledge no one was sleeping: Jayne he had last seen pacing the cargo bay; Simon was resting his injured leg but probably not his eyes; Wash and Zoe were on the bridge; and the intense non-conversation Mal and Inara were having, below in the common room, had decided Book that inventorying the food supplies and devising what new concoctions might be had out of canned tomatoes and bamboo shoots, ample but dull vegetable protein, and the last packets of forbidden rice he'd picked up at Bathgate was a better plan than walking past them to reach his bunk.

He'd been working only a few minutes when River, barefoot, and Kaylee, slippered, had ended what must have been an eerily quiet chase through the ship by rushing into the dining area with an echoing hiss and whisper resolving into breathless words -- "Cheater!" "Am not!" "You play like a _houzi de pigu_ " -- and then collapsing onto the sofa at the far end. He'd heard a few giggles since, and then silence. If no one else could sleep, he'd thought, at least these two girls -- women -- _girls_ had been able to doze off, River's head in Kaylee's lap, or the other way around. He hadn't looked. They were out of his line of vision; he wasn't sure if they knew he was there, though he hadn't tried to hide his presence, continuing to count under his breath and slide cans back and forth.

But having finished that part of his task, he was now only imagining recipes and... shepherding, he supposed. Watching over the supposedly slumbering.

"Glow-worm," River repeated, insistent. "Larva of the family _Lampyridae_. Baby firefly," she added with the precise articulation that in her brother's voice might have read as condescension but in hers was mere mimicry.

"The ship ain't no worm!"

"A lamp. Glowing to say don't bite me."

A pause, and then Kaylee said, "Though she does glow, when the photon drive gets going. And she don't flash, lest there's something wrong. Not like the flies."

"Did you have them, where you grew up?" The careful question made Book's heart ache: this was River at her most integrated, paying attention to other people's lives as though they were as important as the chaos in her own head.

"Did we ever. Over the fields of an evening, all going off together. We'd take blankets out and lie there just to... well, not _just_ to watch. But it made it special."

"Predatory larvae. Good for terraformed planets; eat pests that got there by accident. The fireworks are just a side effect."

"Well, go ahead, spoil my fun!" River giggled. "So the babies are useful," Kaylee said, "and then they grow up and all they are is pretty?"

"Like me."

"Oh, _meimei_... well, you're pretty all right. Right pretty." Kaylee paused. "And smart. That _hun dan_ would have done us all in if it hadn't been for--"

She broke off at River's gasp; Book thought she might have reconsidered the compliment in any case. Early would hardly have been on the ship at all without River's presence.

"Should have kept the stick," said River's high strained voice. "Target practice. Hit him at twenty meters."

Book, frozen in the kitchen, expected a fervent if ambiguous denial from Kaylee, and was surprised when instead she said, "I don't rightly think there's twenty meters straight distance in this ship, 'cept maybe in the cargo bay, and he wasn't ever down there, was he? But don't you go shooting inside _Serenity_ anyhow."

"Flashes," said River with understanding. "Fire. Attracting a mate."

"What... oh, the fireflies. Well, like I told you. Blankets." Kaylee sighed, and Book made ready to clear his throat, but she did not elaborate. "There's men who'd like a girl better if she could shoot like a..."

"Bounty hunter?" suggested River. "Hunts bounties. From Latin _bonitas_. Goodness. And... and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..."

Kaylee's caressing voice soothed River's agitation. "Hush now. But yeah. Wrong type of men, I reckon. 'Cept I think it's part of why Wash loves Zoe. It's complicated, like."

"Easier for fireflies."

"Easier if you have a light in your _piyan_ , yeah."

River laughed, and so did Kaylee, and Book wished he could join in. He meditated for a moment on the limitations of sophistication in humor, and then started at River's next words. "In Shepherd's book it says--"

"Book's book," said Kaylee, laughing again.

"It's a very _old_ book," River reprimanded, in Book's own ironic tones. "You want to have some respect."

"Oh, I do--"

"Eye is the lamp of the body, it says. So if your eye is sound your whole body will be full of light. Otherwise darkness, and worse than darkness." Again, the edge of hysteria, again Kaylee's gentle hushing. "Either metaphor or poorly understood anatomy. Light comes _in_. Hits the receptors and your brain tells you what your eyes process, and they shine a light in your eyes and know who you are, but it's all reflections and shadows. We don't see what's _real_."

"Well, you're real, and I see you." Silence, then Kaylee said, " _Yes_ , you _are_. Look, I can touch you... pinch you..."

"Sensory illusion. Ow!"

"See?" Giggles: tickling was occurring, Book supposed. "Not -- stop that! -- not but what you didn't scare me silly with that melting and being the ship. But I knew you wasn't." After a pause, Kaylee went on, more serious now, answering River's unasked question. "Serenity's voice, it ain't like that. Not even you and her melted together. That was just you. Being a liar."

"Lying in the darkness."

"It was good. It was smart."

It was also, Book realized suddenly, extraordinary. Since he had known her, River had been often obscure or incomprehensible, but at the mercy of free associative thought and speech as she seemed, he had considered her incapable of lying: an innocent in that as in so much else. Yet she had misled Early about her presence on his ship. And although her willingness to go with him had perhaps not been feigned, she had done her best to arrange her own rescue while still pretending estrangement from the crew. It might not all have been purposeful -- planning in the moment and with full comprehension -- but it had been masterful. She'd be in on Mal's cons in no time, if her recovery continued.

Which placed Book neatly once again on the horns of a moral dilemma, but not one he had much difficulty steering where he wanted it to go. A criminal but sane River was far preferable to one inculpable but raving. Now if only it were that easy...

"Commandments in Shepherd's book. Ten is traditional, but they can be read in base eight. No other gods or god's name wrongly or idols. Sabbath day, an artificial construct between planets, honor father and mother, do not kill do not steal do not covet or have adulterous relations, do not bear false witness but it doesn't say don't lie."

"It don't?"

"Not as such," said River.

"Well," Kaylee sighed, "not like we ain't broken most of them aboard _Serenity_. Not the one about adultery, I guess. But all the others."

"I reckon we're right accomplished coveters," said River, now in an uncanny echo of Mal, "and now and then we manage outright stealing. The doc and his crazy sister ain't too respectful of their momma and daddy, and not many likes murdering, but sometimes can't be helped. And Jayne is an idolator."

"He is?"

"Shepherd will explain why," said River, and though Book could not see her, he could feel her pointing finger.

He coughed. "Um," he got out before Kaylee interrupted with a tiny shriek. "I'm sorry," he said, stepping out from behind the counter. It had been Kaylee's head in River's lap, but not anymore. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop."

"A lie," said River. "White or black, like pepper."

"Yes. My apologies." One of the girl's many gifts was putting people at a social disadvantage. "And I would hesitate to explain the why of River's supposition, but I think the how has to do with guns."

"Callahan fullbore autolock, customized trigger and double cartridge thorough-gage. Dual-beam aiming laser, night vision scope."

"Ah, yes. Saint Vera."

"You sure do know a lot about guns for a preacher," said Kaylee.

"And so does River, for a... for a student. But I think _idol_ in the Biblical sense is a representation of a deity for worshipping purposes, and not an item which is itself worshipped. So perhaps Jayne is off the hook, for that much."

River nodded. "Doesn't worship idols, but is one."

"It was a real good statue," said Kaylee after a beat of silence. "Just like him. Round the... the nose, and..."

"The light shines in the darkness," River said, "and the darkness doesn't understand it. They speak different languages."

"I think they understood Jayne just fine," said Book.

"As a symbol?"

The question mark, Book thought, was a potent piece of punctuation. It meant they were having a conversation. "Yes," he said, sitting down, not too close to River but where he could look her in the eye. "And you'd be surprised to find how well darkness and light do speak each other's languages. They are often paired, you know. In fact, nearly inevitably."

"Couldn't have one without the other, couldya?" Kaylee said. "Like those fireflies, River. No fun in the daytime. They're just beetles."

"I think you're right," said Book. "It may be a mite heretical, but--"

"Glowing," River said. "Flying alone into the black. It's very very black on the edges. Black and thin, you spread on the wind but they can still see you, and we try to hide but we can't, too much glowing light, like a city on a hill. No bushels." She took a breath and went on, more calmly. "Four pecks and a handsbreadth. In the cargo bay we could fit--" Her eyes flickered, like circuits counting.

"Once," Kaylee said before River could spit out the calculation, "the cap'n made a deal to transport five hundred bushels of snake from this planet where they raise them for meat. Except it turned out they was live snakes. The guy said, just keep the temperature way down and they'd hibernate, but then the aft compressor broke and--"

"I hear them in the walls at night," said River.

"No, we caught them all... oh, you're playing with me. It was Wash found most of them," Kaylee added to Book. "Jayne hid in his bunk. Sorry. Didn't mean to break out into a story."

"Nothing wrong with stories," Book said.

"Like lights," agreed River. "For the long journeys across the black, and to keep out the shadows. Once upon a time there was River, and she was a ship. Except she lied, and then she wasn't. All the stories in your Bible are lies," she told Book, "but they're true. Like fireflies, still lights even when the lights lie and say I want to mate and really I want to eat you. Did your hair used to be like his?"

"Like whose... oh." Had River ever actually _seen_ Early's hair? But there was more to the question than an assumption about shared race-based characteristics. A good deal more than he wanted her to have asked. "It once had considerably less white to it. When I was younger and less infallibly wise."

"Before it was a symbol."

"We don't cut it because..." He'd never been quite sure why, though something about shepherds and sheep had teased at him often. "Yes. Then."

"A nimbus. Your book is wrong about eyes. Light in the _hair_."

"It really has nothing to do with--"

"Pigments go missing. Out of the dark, into the light. I think I'm ready."

Book shook his head. "Ready for what?"

"For you to let it out again."

"Oh. Are you sure?" he asked, and felt ridiculous. River gave a little gulp and nodded bravely. "All right. Prepare yourself, my child." He loosened the knot at his neck, half-wishing he'd braided it today so this would be too much trouble, and brushed the mass out from his head, a deliberate fright wig. River shrank back.

And then Kaylee laughed, a sun-on-cornfields laugh, guileless and delighted, in which darkness and the past were absent and nothing mattered but this moment, this lightening, this enlightenment. He smiled back helplessly; he could not have done anything else.

And River laughed too, though her fear still shrouded her. She raised her chin and shook her long dark hair down behind her shoulders, then with the grace of a bird and the mockery of a child she lifted it with her hands, up into a cloak, a crown of darkness above her pale face. Her fingers danced, and the darkness danced with them.

"Once upon a time there was a shepherd, and his hair was black," she said. "Tell me a story, preacher-man."


End file.
